But this, this was a thousand times worse.

No battle, no injury, no storm had ever unmanned him. Never, until tonight, had she seen him uncertain or at a loss. Even now, he sat straight at the table, drinking his brandy neat, his shoulders square, and his hand steady. Nevertheless, something had gone out of him. She had seen it leave him, seen it flow away with the life of the ship. He was now as wooden as Vivacia had become. She feared to touch him lest she discover his flesh was as hard and unyielding as the deck.

He cleared his throat. Wintrow’s eyes snapped to him almost fearfully.

“So.” The small word was sharp as a blade. “You think she is dead. How? What killed her?”

It was Wintrow’s turn to clear his throat, a small and tremulous sound. “I did. That is, what I knew killed her. Or drove her so deep inside herself that she cannot find a way back to us.” He swallowed, fighting tears, perhaps. “Maybe she simply realized she had always been dead. Perhaps it was only my belief otherwise that kept her alive.”

Kennit’s shot glass clacked against the table as he set it down sharply. “Talk sense,” he snarled at his prophet.

“Sorry, sir. I’m trying to.” The boy lifted a shaking hand to rub his eyes. “It’s long and it’s confusing. My memories have mixed with my dreams. I think a lot of it I always suspected. Once I was in contact with the serpent, all my suspicions suddenly came together with what she knew. And I knew.” Wintrow lifted his eyes to meet Kennit’s and blanched at the blind fury in the man’s face. He spoke more quickly. “When I found the imprisoned serpent on the Others’ Island, I thought it was just a trapped animal. No more than that. It was miserable, and I resolved to set it free, as I would any creature. No creation of Sa’s should be kept in such cruel confinement. As I worked, it seemed to me that she was more intelligent than a bear or a cat would have been. She knew what I was doing. When I had removed enough bars that she could escape, she did. But on her way past me, her skin brushed mine. It burned me. But in that instant, I knew her. It was as if a bridge had been created between us, like the bond I share with the ship. I knew her thoughts and she knew mine.” He took a deep breath and leaned forward across the table. His eyes were desperate to make the pirate believe him.

“Kennit, the serpents are dragon spawn. Somehow, they have been trapped in their sea form, unable to return to their changing grounds to become full dragons. I could not grasp it all. I saw images, I thought her thoughts, but it is hard to translate that into human terms. When I came back on board the Vivacia, I knew that the liveship was meant to be a dragon. I do not know how exactly. There is some stage between serpent and dragon, a time when the serpent is encased in a kind of hard skin. I think that is what wizardwood is: the husk of a dragon before it becomes a dragon. Somehow, the Rain Wild Traders changed her into a ship instead. They killed the dragon and cut her husk into planks to build a liveship.”

Kennit reached for the brandy bottle. He seized the neck of it as if he would throttle it. “You make no sense! What you say cannot be true!” He lifted the bottle and for one frightening instant, Etta thought he would dash out the boy’s brains with it. She saw in Wintrow’s face that he feared it, too. But the lad did not flinch. He sat silently awaiting the blow, almost as if he would welcome his own death. Instead, Kennit poured brandy into his glass. A tiny wave of it slopped over the edge of his glass onto the white tablecloth. The pirate ignored it. He lifted the glass and downed it at a gulp.

His anger is too great, Etta suddenly thought to herself. There is something else here, something even deeper and more painful than Vivacia’s loss.

Wintrow took a ragged breath. “I can only tell you what I believe, sir. If it were not true, I do not think Vivacia would have believed it so deeply that she died. Some part of her always knew. A dragon has always slept within her. Our brush with the serpent awakened it. The dragon was furious to discover what it had become. When I was unconscious, it demanded of me that I help it share the ship’s life. I…” The boy hesitated. He left something unsaid when he went on. “The dragon woke me today. She woke me and she forced me into full contact with Vivacia. I had held myself back from her, for I did not want her to realize what I knew, that she had never truly been alive. She was the dead shell of a forgotten dragon that my family had somehow bent to their own purposes.”

Kennit took in a sharp breath through his nose. He leaned back in his chair and held up a commanding hand that halted the boy’s words. “And that is the secret of the liveships?” he scoffed. “It can’t be. Anyone who has ever known a liveship would refuse such mad words. A dragon inside her! A ship made of dragon skin. You’re addled, boy. Your illness has cooked your brain.”